29 Responses

Steve, Thank you for your generosity in making these articles available free of charge. I am trying to self educate myself on the changes from the old school MBA to the Lean Start up Launch Pad MBA. I know there is an instructor at ASU that attended your workshop at Stanford, so that other schools would get on track with your leadership in this area of startup developments and their success. Would you by any chance be able to provide me with her name? Sincerely & Respectfully, Scott R Poland, MBA Status: Unemployed

Awesome article, Steve. You break out the differences between the two types of start-ups really well. If a company is not going for venture cash, are you saying get rid of the business plan completely and just opt for a business model approach? I think the plan could be shaped to be a more user friendly doc, but then would most likely end up being more of a marketing plan.

Thank you very much, Steve, for sharing this great article with us. You really put all relevant aspects in the context of preparing a start up in a nutshell. We actually work on a Swiss-German-Russian project where we apply the business model canvas approach. This will hopefully end successfully. I will keep you posted.

Thank you very much, Steve, for sharing this great article. You put all relevant aspects in the context of building a start up in a nutshell. We currently work on a Swiss-German-Russian project where we apply the business model canvas. Hopefully with the successful launch – until then there is still some work to be done. Your article and your MOOC “How to Build a Start Up” is an awesome support for us. Thanks a lot.
-Michael

My VP at work recommended this book ‘The Lean Startup’ and it has changed my career and my life. The author Eric Reis has led me into a variety of rabbit holes … from his professor’s blog – to reading and using Six Sigma and in particular Designing For Six Sigma DFSS.

I’ve been loosing sleep because I want to spread these concepts that are so expertly summarized in this HBR article. Now I have permission to share.Thanks Mr. Blank. I owe you one.

Thanks Steve! I’ve been a big fan and have been trying to figure out how I can implement this at my 18 year old company, which has a veto culture for new ideas. I started a new agile team with one other person called the Lean IdeaLab. The Lean Startup is transforming how we build products, and we have even exceeded our own expectations.

For example, we created an 850 person engaged Customer Advisory Panel without spending a dime by making it a selection process and recognizing those selected on our website. We secured for our team autonomy to pursue any idea create any Minimum Viable Product (MVP) without being stopped or needing any approvals, including my own boss. This alone has been a key to implementing the Lean Startup. It has enabled us to move rapidly and cut through the bureaucracy, approval committees, and veto culture. We’ve also produced rapid results which has built credibility, creating 4 MVP’s in the first 8 weeks.

We held a Lean IdeaJam offsite brainstorming session with 11 people from across various departments. About two thirds the way through our IdeaJam, we sent a survey to our Advisory Panel and received real-time learning on what they thought were the best ideas (we received 341 surveys).

My CEO has been so impressed that he had me briefly talk at our board meeting and asked me to give an hour presentation at our upcoming all-staff meeting. And we even included some of our Board of Directors in our learning as well, giving them a demo of our MVPs and ideas to get their feedback. In the future, I can see a standing 15 min agenda item at board meetings for Lean Startup learning from the board.

So a big thanks for all you’re doing and how this impacts established companies as well, as you mention in your article!

[…] Everything” provides an excellent introduction to Lean Startup and Customer Development. A free reprint (PDF) is available from Steve Blank’s web site and I recommend this article to everyone who wants to get started on Lean Startup or just needs to […]

[…] Globally, I also see signs that Lean Startup is getting more broadly adopted in the enterprise: as I wrote a couple weeks ago, in May 2013, Lean Startup made the title of the Harvard Business Review: Steve Blank’s article “Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything” provides an excellent introduction to Lean Startup and Customer Development. This is huge – and it will make sure that corporate mangers across the world will at least know the terminology – including German ones, as the German translation of the article has been published in the July issue of the Harvard Business Manager. A free reprint of the original article (PDF) is available from Steve Blank’s web site. […]

[…] The Lean Startup changes everything. (note: if you haven’t done so already, see Steve Blank’s groundbreaking article on the Harvard Business Review). Startups now have a playbook to minimize failure rates and build stuff that customers actually want, and finally, large companies can take note and envy the youthful endeavors with cause – lean startups can provide valuable lessons to their internal innovation teams – this of course, after figuring out their own ways to deal with corporate governance, incentives and structural issues that allow innovation to flourish – and new memo: myopic focus on ‘shareholder return’, non-project specific bonuses, and five-year plans on large known markets isn’t they way to successfully innovate . […]

[…] Steve Blank’s official blog Mr. Blank has allowed Harvard Business Review to freely distribute his article on why the lean startup changes everything. The graphics alone on this page are as valuable as startup boot camp in my […]

[…] Lean start up changes everything – Steve Blank – submitted by Harvard Business Review – Steve commented that his paper emerged from a recognition that although start-ups are seen by many of those in larger businesses as small versions of larger businesses, the reality is that they are fundamentally different so need a totally different planning and development tools. […]